The Bhikṣuṇī Maṇimēkhalai

83 - The Historical Materials
Sanskrit origin notwithstanding. Kālēru therefore may be identified
with the Kāriyār. The identification may be philologically
satisfactory but it must be proved to be satisfactory geographically
and historically. Kālēru may be taken to be Kāriyār in Tamil. But was
that the region that was likely to be attacked by the combined army of
the Cēra and the Pāṇḍya advancing against, it may be even, the
territory dependent upon Kāñcī?
All that territory almost up to Nellore itself was included in the Tamil
land in those early times. The Śangam poems have reference to a
Tiraiyaṉ, distinct from the Toṇḍamāṉ chief, Iḷaṁ Tiraiyaṉ, whose
hill is described as Vēngaḍam (Tirupati); his capital was, according to
one Ahanāṉūṟu poem, 49 Pavattiri. Pavattiri can now be satisfactorily
identified again from the Nellore inscriptions with Reḍḍipālem, in
Gūḍūr taluk of the Nellore district. Inscriptions in it describe the
place as Pavattiri in ‘Kaḍalkoṇḍa Kākandi Nāḍu’, Kākandi Nāḍu that
is submerged in the sea. Till a comparatively late period inscriptions
in the Gūḍūr taluq, up to the frontier of the Pulicat lake in its
northern extremity, are in Tamil. The old territory of the Tiraiyaṉs
must have extended as far north as that. In other words the northern
frontier of the territory [49] dependent upon Kāñcī must have been in
that region.
The name Kākandi Nāḍu has its own tale to tell. Kākandi is the name
of Kāvēripaṭṭiṇam, and the derivation of that name is given in the
Maṇimēkhalai 50 itself. When Paraśurāma came to attack the Cōḻa
king Kāntama, he took the advice of Agastya and escaped, leaving the
49 Poems 85 and 340. In the latter the author Narkīrar seems to state that
Pavattiri had already ceased to be a prosperous place.
50 XXII. Ll. 37-38.